AUBURN — The lack of a second official delayed Tuesday’s Eastern A field hockey quarterfinal for 46 minutes.

The wealth of experience and discipline on Lawrence’s back line kept Edward Little scoreless a lot longer than that.

Senior Jessica Bellefleur’s goal 3:28 into the second half gave No. 6 Lawrence all the offense it needed to upset No. 3 Edward Little, 1-0, at Sherwood Heights.

Lawrence (10-4-1) moves on to the semifinals on Saturday. Edward Little finishes its season at 9-4-2.

“We were worried about big sticks and big hits,” Lawrence coach Lisa Larrabee said. “We heard that Edward Little’s fast and they’re a good hitting team. And they are. I think my defense came from discipline. It was so pretty to watch.”

The field conditions weren’t pretty. It was a wet track at Sherwood Heights, which slowed down both teams. 

More critical to slowing down the Eddies, though, was senior defensman Danielle Dubois, who cleared the ball out on numerous EL rushes.

“My center-back, Danielle Dubois is just an outstanding player,” Larrabee said. “She gets voted MVP the majority of the games.”

“When they came down one side,” Larrabee added, “we did a cover-recover, we dropped, and my kids knew they had to run that extra 20 yards to be there for safety reasons, if nothing else.”

Lawrence outshot EL, 11-4.

“We had great scoring opportunities that we didn’t use,” EL coach Greg Perkins said. “We’ve had games where we’ve had trouble finishing, and today was one of them. We were a touch pass away from scoring a couple of goals.”

The Bulldogs had a few close calls of their own, starting with a penalty shot by Kaitlin LaPlante a little over five minutes into the contest. The shot went into EL goalie Amanda Williams’ chest. Brianna Robbins also blocked a Danielle Spaulding shot in front of an exposed right corner of the cage to maintain the scoreless tie for halftime.

Bellefleur’s goal came off a corner and a shot near the top middle of the circle that deflected and bounced over the head of Williams (10 saves).

“They got us with an 0ver-the-header, one of those freaky goals,” Perkins said.

“Maybe it went off somebody’s stick. I don’t know,” Bellefleur said. “We came out harder after that.”

Sasha Letourneau, Dubois and Samantha Spaulding kept junior goalie Emily Lambert (four saves) from facing steady pressure. EL had one flourish in the final five minutes, but Laplante cleared the ball out with about two minutes to go and, with the help of Sophia Lindsay and Danielle Spaulding, kept the field tilted to the Bulldogs’ offensive end until time ran out.

“We knew it was going to be a close game. The four middle teams — three, four, five, six — if you look at their records, they’re all the same,” Perkins said. “We knew any one of those four was going to be a battle.”

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